Americans are not financially prepared for retirement and the World Economic Forum (2019) is forecasting the US retirement savings gap to grow consistently for the next three decades. Addressing this retirement savings gap will almost certainly require individuals to increase their retirement savings rate. Embracing this increased individual accountability for retirement savings is found in this research to lead to a higher retirement savings intention. However, this research also found that perceptions about who is accountable for the retirement savings gap is not uniform, but rather is polarized along political lines. Those who affiliate with the Republican party believe relatively more strongly in individual accountability for retirement saving while those who affiliate with the Democratic party believe more strongly in the accountability of institutions like the government, Wall Street and employers. This research experiments with temporal framing as a novel mechanism for disengaging respondents from these politically affiliated retirement savings accountability beliefs, and by doing so, influencing their retirement saving intentions. Temporal framing was chosen as a mechanism for moderating politically affiliated beliefs about perceived accountability for retirement saving because distal temporal framing has been shown in prior research (Roh, McComas, Rickard & Decker, 2015) to be effective in reducing entrenched resistance. Distal framing in this research was expected to reduce resistance to ‘mismatched’ messages – which are ones that counter existing politically affiliated beliefs ab The results confirm a clear distinction between Republican affiliated respondents, who place high accountability for the retirement saving gap on individuals and low accountability on institutions, and Democrat affiliated respondents, who consider both individuals and institutions as accountable. Furthermore, the research confirms that self-identified political affiliation does not influence the importance that respondents placed on retirement savings. And for both political affiliations, a higher perceived individual accountability for retirement savings is associated with an increased retirement savings priority. However, temporal framing as a mechanism for moderating politically affiliated beliefs about accountability was not effective as applied in this research, possibly because the tested messages were not sufficiently persuasive. The findings from this research can be applied by practitioners to set the tone and content of messages about retirement savings, to target messages to the most receptive audiences, and to advance academic understanding of the influence of proximate and distal message framing. And most importantly, this research makes a small but meaningful contribution towards understanding how to ensure a dignified retirement for all Americans. / Business Administration/Marketing

Throughout South Africa, people are faced with various decisions with regard to planning for their future, but more so in planning for their retirement. It happens quite often that these investment decisions are postponed until only a few years before retirement, whether it is because of personal circumstances (cash flow restrictions) or changing employment. A number of people simply forget to plan for their retirement. Investment for retirement has become increasingly complex because of the great number of investment choices available and therefore this research attempts to identify and evaluate the most commonly used retirement investment opportunities in the market with their respective advantages and disadvantages. The research focuses on investment opportunities from a savings point of view and also evaluates each option from a South African income tax point of view which includes the cash inflows and outflows at the different stages (during the investment period as well as the maturity/retirement period). A number of investing options might seem very attractive at the initial phase, but may be less attractive at retirement or maturity date (especially looking at the tax benefits). This study focuses on both the current and newly proposed legislation as presented during the recent budget speech by the current Minister of Finance, Pravin Gordhan. AFRIKAANS : Regoor Suid-Afrika word mense gekonfronteer met besluite ingevolge die beplanning vir hul toekoms asook die beplanning vir hul aftrede. Dit gebeur gereeld dat hierdie beleggingsbesluite uitgestel word as gevolg van persoonlike omstandighede (wat kontantvloeibeperkings insluit) asook as gevolg van verandering van werkgewers. Party mense laat eenvoudig na om vir aftrede te beplan. Om te belệ vir aftrede word toenemend moeiliker as gevolg van die hoeveelheid beleggingsopsies beskikbaar. Hierdie navorsing poog dus om die mees algemene beleggingsopsies wat beskikbaar is, te identifiseer tesame met elkeen se individuele voordele en nadele. Die navorsing fokus op beleggingsgeleenthede vanuit „n besparingsoogpunt asook die Suid-Afrikaanse inkomstebelasting gevolge van elk van die opsies. Die Suid-Afrikaanse inkomstebelasting gevolge sluit in die kontantinvloeie en -uitvloeie tydens die duur van die beleggings asook by aftrede. Baie beleggingsopsies lyk aantreklik op die beleggingsdatum maar kan nadelig wees by aftrede. Die belastingontleding fokus op beide die huidige wetgewing asook die voorgestelde verandering in die wetgewing soos voorgestel tydens die begrotingsrede deur die huidige Minister van Finansies, Pravin Gordhan. Copyright 2011, University of Pretoria. All rights reserved. The copyright in this work vests in the University of Pretoria. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the University of Pretoria. Please cite as follows: Kokott, J 2011, The evaluation of different retirement investment options as savings and tax planning tools, MCom dissertation, University of Pretoria, Pretoria, viewed yymmdd < http://upetd.up.ac.za/thesis/available/etd-03262012-124429 / > F12/4/182/gm / Dissertation (MCom)--University of Pretoria, 2012. / Taxation / unrestricted